Shutdown Diary
The latest stats from Washpo:
In the past week in the U.S. ...
New daily reported cases fell 12.3%
New daily reported deaths rose 1.9%
Covid-related hospitalizations fell 5.2%
Among reported tests, the positivity rate was 4%.
The number of tests reported fell 25.1%
Washpo also publishes a nice vaccination graphic:
In my own baby boomer nuclear family, 6 siblings plus my Mom are fully vaccinated, with the remaining sibling recently taking her first Moderna shot so it'll be a couple of weeks to fully vaccinated. Among the good notes: Pfizer is looking at getting full vs. emergency use approval and is hoping to get approval for older kids.
I have some pet peeves with how some libertarians like Ron Paul and Tom Wood are describing the pandemic. Make no mistake; I have issues with the nature and extent of shutdown policies. But, among other things, Ron Paul has expressed skepticism over vaccine safety and suggested s crony capitalistic relationship between Pfizer and the federal government. Let's be clear here: .the federal government made itself the single payer. Pfizer did not apply for available R&D funding. The federal government controls vaccine approval. I'm sure vaccine rollout through existing channels (including hospitals, clinics, pharmacies, etc.) would have been much smoother (yes, I'm aware some are being used in the current rollout, but to point at my own case, I had registered with my county for over 6 weeks before a private hospital contacted me by email to suggest it had available slots (in another county).)
But, for example, I've seen Tom Woods suggest that children are negligibly impacted by COVID-19 in terms of catching/spreading the disease or dying from it. I think a lot of this has to do the whole public school closure kerfuffle. Let's be clear: children can and do get infected; they are more likely asymptomatic and a likely source of the virus. The nature of how viruses spread doesn't change for children. There are development-related hypotheses why children, in a certain age range, without other serious health issues, usually don't die if and when infected. I think of the 580K US death, just a few hundred are children. But make no mistake: this is a nasty disease. Washpo wrote a heartbreaking story of a few of these; I especially found the story of the young immigrant from Romania who caught the disease from her adoptive dad particularly poignant. I remember shooting off an unacknowledged email response to Tom Woods who pushed the youth myth citing his so-called "experts", pointing out my oldest nephew's tween/teen daughters seemed to catch it in on an east Texas school bus trip and spread it to the rest of the family, including their parents.
Even some of my favorite politicians like Rand Paul and Thomas Massie have bad judgment on the issue. Both of them have been infected, fairly early in the crisis, likely in traveling to and from DC, Massie finding out from an antibody test, both asymptomatic. They both argued they had natural immunity from earlier infection. Now to a degree that's true, but there are individual differences, and the nature and duration of relevant antibodies is largely unknown. We do know that reinfection does occur but at a lower rate (maybe up to 84% lower). Personally I wouldn't take the risk and would take at least one of the 2-shot regiment to boost my body's resistance if I were in their shoes, particularly Rand who recently had lung surgery, related to his neighbor's personal assault. Now as a fellow libertarian, I can't tell Rand Paul what to do with his body, but dissing the need to vaccine encourages the freeloading anti-vaxxers keeping us from achieving herd immunity, He can get reinfected and transmit the virus without showing symptoms.
I've continued to rant on Twitter (@raguillemette) over the current assault on COVID-19 vaccine IP rights. I see absolutely no evidence Pfizer, Moderna, J&J and/or AstraZeneca are manipulating the market or withholding product from the market. Note that mRNA production technology is relatively novel, and many, if not most, vaccine makers internationally can't replicate production in the short term. The issue has to do with global demand scale (highly unusual) and limited raw/intermediate supplies.
The final comment has to do with the false anti-vaxxer rumors that Pfizer vaccine receivers might shed the vaccine on others. The mRNA technology Pfizer used, unlike more traditional vaccines, doesn't contain COVID-19 particles. In earlier COVID-19 vaccine trials, pregnant women were excluded out of precaution. The protocol referenced by the anti-vaxxers has more to do with information gathering, more or less standard boilerplate for various trials, being taken out of context.
Life's Little Problems
I have to start up with a follow-up on the issue with my failed Western Digital portable hard drive. I finally got an email response, including a ticket number. As expected, they came back saying the warranty is the warranty and the claim is outside the warranty period. (I don't think this is a drive issue but more of a power/connection issue.) They then go on to say as a one-time accommodation they are willing to make an exchange, but there will be no warranty on the replacement. I responded back almost immediately. Presumably they're in the process of shipping the replacement. No follow-up with a tracking number yet. Maybe I can query on the ticket number.
Then I logged onto my old workhorse PC for the first time in weeks to find my NEWER security software had "expired". That shouldn't have happened; my newer subscription shows all 5 licenses taken. I knew my "free" ISP licenses were done but I had reinstalled with the new paid licenses. I tried to reinstall, thinking it would update the expiration date. But the first time I try to update the security, "This license has expired." Okay, so now I decide to uninstall the software and reinstall (after a system bounce). The security software protests, "I don't understand why you want to uninstall You still have 2xx days left on your subscription..." Expletive deleted! So I reinstall after a bounce, and then it insists that I uninstall another security software first. But almost always after I finish installing, it has trouble activating the product. It probably takes a good hour before I finally get to a logon screen.
Then, of course, I have to do my Windows updates. It has trouble with the last patch which I think presupposes a feature update last year that never correctly installed. It eventually synced up with the right patch update.
My newer workhorse PC has its own share of problems. First, for the second time over the past month, it did not want to connect with my WIFI. Finally I'll just get my patch cord and connect to my router. Sometimes the issue gets resolved with a reboot.
And then one of my three pieces of backup software balks at a bad sector and crashes the whole backup. Seriously, dude? So I go to chkdsk my C drive, and when it finally gets to the logon screen: "Preparing Windows". If you have ever experienced that joy, you find yourself in a spartan environment with only a few of the usual icons on your desktop, taskbar and system tray. Long story short, I do a safe reboot, make adjustments to Appdata, toggle off safe reboot, and I'm finally back to my normal home screen. Oh, yes: I kicked off that problematic backup software, and it's now past the point it was failing.
That's not the only one with issues I've got another backup laptop which is repeatedly failing the latest Windows update. It takes like overnight to prepare for the update and then dies halfway through install. So something else I'll try to figure out in my spare time...
Entertainment
The most interesting thing on WWE Raw was the return of tag champs AJ Styles and his 7-footer superheavyweight bodyguard Omos. They are building Omos to be an unbeatable monster like Andre the Giant, Braun Strowman and the Great Khali. Omos has limited wrestling moves, so his big thing is squashing average-sized wrestlers, if you enjoy things like Shaq dunking over a fifth grader. They actually try to make Styles, a gifted wrestler, look like the weak link on the team opponents would prefer to face. It's not good for AJ Styles story.
And I was wondering if and when Jimmy Uso, Jey's twin brother, would resurface. It appears Jimmy isn't his cousin Roman Reigns' biggest fan, as he superkicked Seth Rollins for Cesaro's bid to challenge Reigns at Backlash.
